The Australian dollar nudged lower on Wednesday, weighed down by weaker commodities, but a recovery in investor appetite for financial stocks offered good support. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett's move to buy a 9 percent stake in Wall Street's most powerful firm, Goldman Sachs, in a $5 billion deal boosted US share futures and Asian financial stocks.
That in turn underpinned demand for risky high-yield currencies. The Aussie also got a lift from an upbeat International Monetary Fund assessment of the Australian economy. Late on Wednesday, the Aussie eased to $0.8356 from $0.8414 on Tuesday, and pulling further away from a three-week high of $0.8520 struck earlier this week.
It had dropped to as low as $0.8315 earlier in the session. The Aussie has recovered from a one-year low of $0.7800 struck on September 17 in a bout of extreme market volatility in the aftermath of investment bank Lehman Brothers' collapse.